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New Mass Translation

As I attend both the New and Latin Mass regularly, I’m still learning to cope with the new translation (which I like and hopefully, the Latin Mass will probably never need to be retranslated) and have renewed my subscription to Magnificat to help.

This article from Crisis Magazinegives some background and current reaction to the translation from the pews on the left.

An excerpt.

“If you read the dissident or otherwise discontented Catholic blogs and websites you will know those folks are steamed about practically everything.

“A year ago they were beside themselves at the prospects and then the implementation of a long-needed new translation of the Missal. The English translation was generally considered not only weak but out of step with the Universal Church.

“It is well known that the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) charged with a new translation was suspect and eventually had the project taken from them and handed to a small group of priests who burrowed away in offices on K Street in Washington DC. You would see them presiding at the noon Mass at the Catholic Information Center (CIC), the Archdiocesan bookshop and chapel run by Opus Dei. They were beautifully spoken Englishmen and well thought of by Father William Stetson, the Opus Dei priest who ran the CIC at that time, further evidence that the new translation would be solid.

“You would have thought the world was coming to an end if you read the fragrant blogs and websites of the Oh-So-Thoughtful-Always Questioning-Church. They hated everything about it. The advance copy of the translations that came out because Australia jumped the gun really got their engines running. They ran petition drives. They wrote op-eds. They ran campaigns for priests to ignore the new translations.

“Two recent polls take the temperature of American Catholics about the new translations, which are now a year old. One poll shows the dissidents are still angry and even leaving the Church over it. But another poll demonstrates that they are all alone in their unhappiness and that most folks actually like the new translation.

“An online survey just released by U.S. Catholic shows their readership has not gotten over the changes. They call it “stilted, awkward, unnatural, strange, choppy, clumsy, obtuse, wooden, tortured, terrible, ridiculous, inaccessible and abominable.”…

“Online polls generally demonstrate the profile of people who already visit the site. You can be sure that orthodox Catholics do not visit the website of U.S. Catholic. So we can be sure they are alone in their bitterness because a larger and more reliable poll shows it.

“The recently released study conducted by Georgetown’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) shows that 70% either agree or strongly agree, “The new translation of the Mass is a good thing.” Of Catholics who actually attend Mass weekly 84% think the new translation is a good thing.”